IT Review: The LG XBoom is designed to transform living rooms into discos

Designed like a sleek piece of furniture, it can be placed in any corner of your living room or your bedroom and won’t look out of place. And, it comes with nine lighting presets to create a party or cozy atmosphere.

You can also customise your lighting the simple-to-use LG XBoom app.

I’ve got my hands on the 03Q model of the series. It’s easy to get the Bluetooth speaker up and running. You can connect it to your smartphone using a Bluetooth connection or you can use 3.5mm stereo jack to link it with your smartphone or an MP3 player.

There is a 3.5mm stereo port near the X03Q’s base along with a power button and a USB-C port for recharging the internal battery. Its 3,900 mAh Lithium-ion battery can last about 24 hours after a full charge.

People who love premium sounds from wireless high-resolution audio formats may be a little bit disappointed because the X03Q doesn’t support high-resolution audio Bluetooth codecs. It supports normal audio quality codecs of SBC and AAC. Still, the SBC and AAC formats are good enough for party sounds.

The speaker measures 165 x 327 x 165 millimetres in width, height and depth and it weighs 3.2 kilogrammes.

It comes in a water-drop shape with a larger base gradually smaller to the top, with 25 watts for the woofer and 25 watts for driving the midrange and tweeter drivers. The total 50-watt music output is more than enough.

LG designed the XBoom 360 to deliver 360-degree sounds by using an up-firing one-inch silk dome tweeter sending the high-frequency sounds up to the room ceiling while its 2-inch glass fibre mid-range speaker fires mid-frequency sounds to the cone-shaped glass under the tweeter that bounces the sound in circle waves.

At the same time, its 4-inch woofer fires the base sounds onto the floor. The unit also uses two passive radiators, to enhance the base sounds.

I found during the test that the XBoom speaker was loud and clear. The base was deep and solid without ballooning distortion and the midrange and high sounds were very clear.

You can use LG XBoom app to select from three sound options: Standard, Sound Boost, and Custom.

The Standard option suited my musical tastes best. It was clear and distortion-free at all frequency ranges. The Sound Boost option boosted all sound ranges too much and I felt the high and mid-frequency sounds were a bit distorted – especially at very loud volumes.

I noticed that using a 3.5mm Aux cable to connect a Sony Hi-Res Audio MP3 player to the X03Q speaker resulted in much higher sound quality than using a Bluetooth connection. This had deeper and more solid bass and was more detailed.

It’s good that there is the Customise option that lets you adjust the EQ option with six sound frequency bars: 100 hertz, 250 hertz, 500 hertz, 1 kHz, 4 KHz, and 10 kHz.

Several features of the speaker can be controlled via the app. The most fun feature of the app is– changing lighting to suit your musical mood. You can use the app to select one of nine lighting modes in three modes: Ambient, Nature, and Party.

The Ambient Mode has three lighting options: Refreshing Morning, Warm Afternoon Sunlight and Cozy Night Comfort. The Ambient Mode includes a candlelight option.

The lighting options of the Party Mode are Passion of Youth, Cheerful Celebration, and Gorgeous Night View. The lights will flash like lighting in a discotheque.

The Nature Mode has three lighting options: Restart, Aurora, and Gentle Flutter. Each option will gradually circle through colours of lights in non-flashing style. For example, the Restart option will gradually cycle through the red, orange and blue hues, while Aurora will change from blue to purple and green, and Gentle Flutter from light blue to two deeper shades.

Under each mode, you can further customise the lighting by selecting from 16.8 million shades of colours.

You can also use the app to pair two XBoom speakers into dual mode or stereo mode or match several XBoom speakers in multi-mode to boost the sound levels and envelop your partygoers with sound.

And you can pair two X30Q speakers to your LG TV and use them to boost its sound system while watching movies.

The app can be used as a remote control to turn the speaker on and off, and it also provides a music player for files stored on your smartphone.

Apart from using the app, you can press the touch-sensitive buttons on top of the speaker to adjust the volume and skip a track or go back to a previous one on the smartphone connected to the speaker by Bluetooth.

The LG XBoom 360 X03Q can be purchased online from Power Buy store and LG Flagship store on Lazada for 6,990 baht.

Key specs:

Music output: 50 watts (25W woofer + 25W mid)

Audio channel: 1.1ch (3 ways)

Speakers: 4-inch woofer, 2-inch midrange driver, 1-inch dome tweeter

Impedance: 4 ohms

Connectivity: Aux in (3.5mm), Bluetooth

Bluetooth audio format: SBC, AAC

Battery: 3,900 mAh Lithium-ion, 24-hour battery life

Dimensions: (W x H x D): 165 x 327 x165mm

Weight: 3.2kg